.... The IDF soldiers went on board the ship with the expectation that they would be met with "non-violent resistance." The reason that they had those expectations was because the flotilla organizers made very clear that this is what they planned to do - as they said, "The only resistance that there might be would be passive resistance such as physically blocking the steering room, or blocking the engine room downstairs, so that they couldn't get taken over. But that was just symbolic resistance."

Because the IDF foolishly believed them, they dropped onto the Turkish ship armed with just riot-dispersal paint guns, plus personal handguns as a last resort.

And they fell into a well-planned ambush....

.... The bottom line is, if the IDF had known that they were meeting with a mob of violent, crazy, suicidal Islamists, they would have prepared better for it and there would have been less loss of life. But since the Free Gaza and other sponsors of the ships made very public statements about their "peaceful" intentions, the IDF was ill-prepared for the confrontation and things went awry....

Todah to Jewish Current Issues for bringing our attention to this video, released by the IDF. It shows the activists attacking our soldiers as they boarded the ship.

This bit of CHAZAK! comes from Sultan Knish. I shouldn't have blown his punchline by excerpting it, but it's so good.

.... The left does not hate Israel because of Ariel Sharon, but because of Moses and Abraham and King David. It wants Jews to forget that they are not merely cogs in a socialist state-- to forget that are the descendants of kings and warriors. The sons and daughters of the people who faced down Assyrian chariots and Roman legions, the children of a great civilization in a sea of barbarism that changed the world.

They want us to forget, because a people that does not know its own power is already enslaved. In the last century, we remembered that we were the descendants of kings and warriors. Of queens and prophetesses. Sailors and scholars. That we had a better destiny than to escape prejudice by subsuming ourselves into the left's great dream of a universal socialist state. We remembered and we started to become those things again. The left fears this exodus from their power, as that ancient Pharaoh feared the loss of his Hebrew slaves. They want us to forget. To sink down again. To accept their brand of liberalism that denies our rights in the name of their ideology. Their lies are chains around our feet. Those who choose to be slaves will wear them proudly as iron badges of honor. Those who choose to break them will be forever free.

JERUSALEM -- Israel's prime minister has called off a planned visit to the White House to deal with a crisis over a botched naval raid that killed 10 pro-Palestinian activists.

Netanyahu, who is in Canada, was set to travel to Washington to meet with President Barack Obama on Tuesday. But his office says he decided to return home early after Monday's commando raid....

I am not going to participate in the bigoted media feeding frenzy over this ambush. No one should be in the least surprised that the Israelis are being described as "commandos" (Goliath) -- and their attackers, as mere "passengers" (David), as in this AP report.

I said everything I wanted to say in my previous post (for a while at least, I'll leave it in the "featured" position, at the top). The only thing new here is that Netanyahu will not be giving the White House the photo op that Obama needed so desperately.

Both countries that border the Gaza strip, Israel and Egypt, maintain an internationally recognized economic blockade of the Gaza strip, meant to isolate and weaken Gaza's ruling HAMAS terrorists.

I was trying to ignore this for reasons you will soon understand, but of late there is news of an international group of supposedly humanitarian "activists" - including some Americans - who decided to challenge that blockade. They loaded up a flotilla of six ships with "humanitarian aid" and headed for Gaza. They were of course stopped by the Israeli navy, as they knew they would be.

Israel offered to bring their ships to shore, unload the "aid" and send it to Gaza for them by land -- and of course deport the "activists." Had things gone according to this Israeli plan, no one would have been hurt - much less, killed - and the entire matter would have gone forever unnoticed. The problem is, the whole point of activism is to get noticed. As widely as possible.

One has to wonder why anyone in their right mind would even attempt to bust through a blockade maintained by the Israeli military. They obviously had no chance whatsoever of meeting the ostensible goal of getting this "aid" directly to the HAMAS-ruled (and Jew-free) Gaza strip, so what was the point?

The point was to force their anti-Israel propaganda into headlines all over the world, attacking Israel yet again for their awesome brutality, even toward poor little peaceniks. And to make certain that happened, these "activists" attacked the Israeli soldiers (sailors?) who boarded their ships. As to what exactly happened, we've let ourselves in for a Jenin redux, another "he said, she said."

There are reports of at least one stabbing and a story of one of the "peace activists" grabbing a gun away from an Israeli sailor and shooting the Israelis with it. And of course there were weapons on board the "peace ships." Right. Aren't there always?

According to Naomi Ragen, four Israeli soldiers were injured in the clash, one of them seriously. Several of the would-be blockade busters were killed, and some injured, when the Israelis returned fire.

So now there will be an international brouhaha - it's started already - and Israel will be on the defensive, trying to "explain" why they killed all these poor little peaceniks who wanted nothing more than to bring peanut butter and jelly to their fellow Jew-haters in Gaza. Awww. So sad.

Now, if Israel were smart, instead of overly explaining (which simply allows our enemies equal time in front of the cameras), they would mimic Obama's reponse to the Sestak scandal-in-waiting: Postpone comment as long as possible and then say nothing. Wait, wait, wait, and hope it goes away.

Media conditions already afford Israel some PR advantage, at least in the U.S. -- (1) The incident [small "i"] happened too late to make this morning's headlines; (2) it's Memorial Day so everyone's either at a picnic or a cemetery, not paying attention to the news; and (3) Americans are presently consumed by the oil spill story, which is after all, the Number One Focus of The Won.

If Israel is not smart, they will do what they always do -- bend over backwards investigating, explaining and defending. This is a concession of news "turf" to the enemy. If the poor little peaceniks are allowed to turn this into a [capital "I"] International Incident, they win. It's that simple.

We Jews need to learn to hang on to what we have, and stop giving it away. If I were in charge of the official Israeli response, it would consist of one big shrug of the shoulders and a rhetorical question: "What did these idiots think would happen if they broke a naval blockade and then attacked the Israeli military?" (The spokesperson shakes his or her head in condescending disgust, and mutters something about how maybe next time they will think twice before doing something so stupid.)

When our Earnest Reporter - going to great lengths to seek The Truth ... plus the names, nationalities and life stories of all the activists - follows the spokesperson down the hall to ask about Abu Mazen's charge that this was a "massacre," the Israelis laugh derisively. They are quick to point out that had they shot and killed every last Jew-hating propagandist on all of those ships, now THAT would have been a massacre.

-----------------------After Thoughts ---------------------------

Don't we wish this were the end? But unless and until we deal with the enemy's very successful David-and-Goliath theme that underlies all their propaganda attacks, we will continue to lose the battles that make up this War of Words and Images.

We all know that Israel is really David, not Goliath -- We are the Jew, not the Philistine. So rather than strive to undo the immense damage that's already been done to us, why don't we work with their lies to our own advantage? They want us to be Goliath? Okay, so we say to our opponents what Goliath said to his:

"Am I a dog, that thou comest to me with sticks? ... Come to me and I will give your flesh to the fowls of the air and to the beasts of the field."

Ah, but Jews believe in the Torah -- so much so that we are afraid to say what Goliath said, because we know in our kishkes that Goliath is bad and that David will win!

Well, wake up, boys and girls: the imposition of these roles is totally fake and has no real Torah behind it. The enemy's fabrications have nothing whatsoever to do with Truth and Torah, quite the opposite in fact. So don't be confused, don't buy into their propaganda, don't believe that we are Goliath. We are the Jewish People, Am Yisrael, remember? Look around you. We live, and the Philistines are long extinct.

It was very clever of the enemy to use one of our own stories against us. If instead they had chosen a story out of Shakespeare, for instance, we would have had no trouble playing their game and winning it. The role of Goliath, however, goes against every bone in the Jewish body. We yearn to be cast as David -- David the small, the good, the faithful. I would strongly urge that we realize how very much we hurt ourselves by getting stuck in that reaction. We cannot afford internal confusion, nor the paralysis it causes.

They want Goliath? We should give them Goliath. And we should play our role to the hilt -- larger than life, fearsome to all who behold us. And we should do this knowing that we are not really Goliath because they are not really David. They can't be, because they are not of the essence of David. This is not Torah, this is a concoction. Its ending is in no way prescribed by Heaven.

That's where our enemy screwed up. They assumed that if they cast themselves as David, that they would win in the end. And they knew we would be vulnerable to that same conclusion. But this not being Torah, the tale is not yet written in full. And they're not the only ones who get to write it.

We have to come to grips with the fact we are co-authors. The enemy has set the stage and cast the roles, so be it, but if we can shake off our visceral paralysis, we could write the ending... any way we want. I say we end it in the simple, natural and expected way, without Divine intervention. On the face of it, Goliath is bigger and stronger. So he wins. End of story.

And why not? It's not as if this were a morality play. Morality and the palestinianArabs are mutually exclusive notions. This is a story of lies for a market of lies. I just hope we can sell it, with the ending that we want.

VoteSmart.orgdocuments that in 2005, "Representative Rahall supported the interests of the Council on American-Islamic Relations [CAIR] 100 percent." And he's mentioned in a book called The Muslim Mafia as the No. 1 Recipient of donations from Arab Muslim organizations like the Arab American Leadership PAC, that has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood, HAMAS and al-Qaeda.

So what's not to like about replacing a terroristsympathizer with a strong supporter of Israel ? I've probably said it here before - and I will be saying it a lot more from now until November -

It was stunning to see Maureen Dowd (linked in the previous post) write about Obama's "growing up without a daddy" and his "repeated parental abandonment" yet fail to grasp why it is that he's unable to fulfill a leadership role -- or as she calls it, "the paternal aspect of the presidency." Maureen, dahlink, maybe it's because he grew up without a daddy, and for that matter, without two daddies... or a mommy.

This is why Maureen Dowd writes about the White House, while David Axelrod is in the White House. According to a new book (i.e., not yet in paperback) mentioned by Peter Wehner at Politics Daily, Axelrod was on to him from the beginning:

... Axelrod also warned that Obama's confessions of youthful drug use, described in his memoir, Dreams From My Father, would be used against him. "This is more than an unpleasant inconvenience," he wrote. "It goes to your willingness and ability to put up with something you have never experienced on a sustained basis: criticism. At the risk of triggering the very reaction that concerns me, I don't know if you are Muhammad Ali or Floyd Patterson when it comes to taking a punch. You care far too much what is written and said about you...."

Crimping his carefully crafted outsider image and undercutting a centerpiece of his 2008 campaign, President Barack Obama got caught playing the usual politics — dangling a job offer for a political favor in the hunt for power.... True or not, Obama has a political problem.

Because what did take place was backroom bargaining, political maneuvering and stonewalling, all of which run counter to the higher — perhaps impossibly high — bar Obama has set for himself and his White House to do things differently...

.... Oddly, the good father who wrote so poignantly about growing up without a daddy scorns the paternal aspect of the presidency.

In the campaign, Obama’s fight flagged to the point that his donors openly upbraided him. In the Oval, he waited too long to express outrage and offer leadership on A.I.G., the banks, the bonuses, the job loss and mortgage fears, the Christmas underwear bomber, the death panel scare tactics, the ugly name-calling of Tea Party protesters.

Too often it feels as though Barry is watching from a balcony, reluctant to enter the fray until the clamor of the crowd forces him to come down. The pattern is perverse. The man whose presidency is rooted in his ability to inspire withholds that inspiration when it is most needed....

... Obama invented himself against all odds and repeated parental abandonment, and he worked hard to regiment his emotions. But now that can come across as imperviousness and inflexibility. He wants to run the agenda; he doesn’t want the agenda to run him. Once you become president, though, there’s no way to predict what your crises will be.

He seemed to tune out a bit after the exhausting battle over health care, with the air of someone who says to himself: “Oh, man, that was a heavy lift. I’m taking a break.”

He’s spending the holiday weekend in Chicago when he should be commemorating Memorial Day here with the families of troops killed in battle and with veterans at Arlington Cemetery....

People needed to be assured that Obama possessed three basic presidential traits: being informed, engaged and empathetic. As for the first trait, he was superb as always.... On the second, he was a bit wobbly... On the third point, empathy, Obama came up short....

Doesn't anyone remember that Sandy Berger stole classified terrorism documents from the National Archives, stuffed them in his pants and hid them at a construction site? He later retrieved them, took them to his office for whatever purpose, destroyed them and then lied to investigators. He was convicted for this theft and lost his license to practice law.

You would think that Berger would presently be living out the remainder of his life in utter disgrace, but no! Today he has a rather long piece in the Washington Post, praising Obama's national security strategy. I guess I shouldn't be surprised. After all, WaPo has lent their prestige and ink to Hamas terrorists, so why not American convicts?

This, along with Clinton being called upon to bail out the Obama administration on the Sestak scandal, means what? The only thing that occurs to me is that someone somewhere is awfully desperate.

If I were the Chicago thugs in the White House, I wouldn't love the Clinton Machine doing me any favors. It will be interesting to see what they require in return.